Moscow Machination Read online

  Herr Stalin had looked at their Beetle design and felt it was completely gay. He had then forced the entire VW team into a secret bunker under the Kremlin and ordered them to work on an ultimate doomsday weapon. It was the fall of 1945 and nukes were already so passé.

  Stalin’s order was simple: “Prototype or Purge.”

  Being Stalin’s ultimate secret, with his death, all knowledge of the secret VW team had been lost.

  And now after almost seven decades this ultimate doomsday weapon was ready. Apparently.

  Was the prototype ready? No, the weapon itself was ready.

  What was the weapon? Otto wouldn’t answer that.

  What was its potential? Otto wouldn’t answer that either.

  Who was running the program now? One of the other scientists’ sons, Mueller.

  Can the Russian president use this mystery weapon? Not yet.

  And why the HELL not? The President had to go down with Otto into the bunker.

  Anna Petrova was convinced that these scientists craved some sort of recognition, a pat on the back. Perhaps medals.

  But why weren’t their torture drugs cracking Otto...? Apparently Otto’s gang of scientists had developed a counter-torture drug, which made Otto forget his life temporarily. Other than a very small subset of scenarios and topics, he was a blank slate. After that Brezhnev incident, the scientists didn’t take any chances.

  Anna Petrova and her guards extracted all this within thirty minutes. With nothing left to do, the disappointed Anna allowed Otto to describe this encounter with Brezhnev.

  Otto Fuchs’s brother, Karl Fuchs had made the previous and only visit to the Kremlin through the fireplace. It had been at the height of the Brezhnev stagflation in 1982. That was also the year, West Germany had made it to the FIFA World Cup finals. Three nights before the final, Stalin’s secret ‘community’ under the fireplace had decided to request a trip to Madrid to see the game. After all, they had a functioning prototype of ‘the weapon’ and were just a decade away from deployment.

  A terrified Brezhnev had called in his KGB guards and tortured the man to death. The man’s tales were so tall, that at one point, the KGB contemplated sending Karl to some seaside resort in Sochi. Brezhnev wanted none of it.

  Brezhnev had then sent the KGB under the Kremlin to find this freaky cult, just to make sure. The KGB, assuming that the guy was nuts, had half assed the search. They found neither weapons nor suspects.

  Still unsettled, Brezhnev (btw who could blame him) had presumed it was a western conspiracy to break the Berlin Wall and reunite Germany. He ordered a GRU squad to fly into Madrid and recalibrate the West German team hotel’s air conditioning system.

  A bone cold W Germany had lost the World Cup 3 - 1 to Italy.

  After an hour Mika gave up. “Madam I think you should purge him.”

  “I suppose,” sighed the President.

  “But that Brezhnev bit was pretty odd and yet, quite detailed. Maybe we could check up on old KGB archives… to see if he is telling the truth?” suggested Vlad half-heartedly.

  “And West Germany did lose to Italy that year,” added another guard.

  The President made up her mind. “Nah. Forget it. I got a better idea.”

  Chapter 9

  Fangchun Observation Tower, China

  “You sure… this… whatever it is that you have planned is our best approach?” queried the Chinese Premier.

  “Trust me. My analysts know what they are doing,” assured Hu Gong, the head of Chinese Intelligence.

  “Ok, explain to me again, why I’m here on this God forsaken tower on a Sunday, instead of sipping green tea with my family?”

  “I wanted it to be a surprise.”

  “Can’t believe I let you drag me here,” Premier Xiannian shook his head.

  “Let me explain…” said the Hu Gong.

  Premier Xiannian and his intelligence chief Hu Gong stood on the observation deck of the new Fangchun Tower. Located on the tongue of the tri-border area with Russia, it was a typical Chinese tower, with sweet curves and sharp edges.

  This tongue of Chinese land was wedged between the Tumen River to the west and the Trans-Siberian railway to the east. Some Yale returned twerp, son of a party official, had done a SWOT analysis and concluded that a tower in this forsaken place had a huge potential for tourism. Ten years and counting, the crowds had never showed up while that twerp had returned to Yale for an MBA.

  The Fangchun Tower wasn’t even that tall, as the Russians had objected to anything over 100ft. Something about being in the line of sight of their ICBM silo. Boo freakin hoo.

  “I am still waiting…”

  Hu Gong began, “Ya ok. So the Russians hit our trains and damaged several of our factories. Right?

  “Right.”

  “The Japanese put them to it.”

  “I thought it was the Germans…”

  “Oh yeah right, Japan and Germany. Both. The question is why?”

  “Yes, because of the whole IP theft allegations, UN voting… Hu I know this part quite well.”

  “Yeah and now our own high speed rail manufacturing program is in danger… or at least delayed…”

  “Come on…Hu, get to the point,” said the Premier as he trained his high power binoculars on a freight train chugging along the Trans-Siberian. He wondered what was in its cargo hold.

  “Yes, I’m getting to the point, Mr. Premier. Just give me a second.”

  “Fast.”

  The Premier felt a breeze. It smelt of sea weed. Sweet. The breeze grew stronger. Sweeter… and then unexpectedly a dick punch… a pungent disgusting odor…

  “Sweet Buddha… what the hell is that smell?”

  Hu Gong took in a deep gulp, “Good old fish.” Unlike his Premier he savored it.

  “Ughh. Give me your whisky,” ordered the Premier.

  Hu Gong passed over his flask.

  “Relax Premier. It’s just dried fish… very delicious.”

  “You eat that shit? I thought we paid you well? Are we paying you enough?” smirked the 42 year old Premier.

  “Don’t tell me you have never tasted that…”

  “Never.”

  “You Beijing pretty boys…” said Hu Gong, “… You are all soft. Just because people want to build their phones and cars here doesn’t mean we have to give up on our simple pleasures.”

  “Enough. Don’t patronize me. Get to the point. Where is this action you promised?”

  Satisfied with the Premier’s outburst, Gong continued, “Two months into Anna Petrova’s presidency a British tabloid ran a story accusing her of being a crazy cat lady. The photos they published showed Petrova seated next to a samovar and two cats.”

  “Two is not too many…” countered the Premier.

  “Well an American tabloid ran a closer analysis and found hair on the carpet. Black hair.”

  “So?”

  “The pictured cats were both snow white. There was a third cat.”

  “Okay three cats. But that’s probably the line between genius and genocidal.”

  “That’s not all. The meek Russian tabloids finally got bold and found two more cats, bringing the total to five.”

  “Ok I’m intrigued, but what the fuck does all that have to do with us… here in this shithole?”

  “Those Presidential cats have vanished…”

  “She is a cat strangler now?” smiled the Premier, “It was probably the FSB. They must have sold them off to some crazy cat lady in Idaho.”

  “We are not sure. But our intelligence did find something…”

  The Chinese Premier was horrified. “Cat graves…? No, no… are your men digging them up right now? Please stop! Just leave them alone Hu.”

  “No Sir. We would never dig up a cat cemetery” Hu Gong winked as he pulled out a second whisky flask.

  “You carry two flasks?”

  “This is my Sunday flask.”

  “Sweet. Continue.”

  “Ok, when these
allegations about Petrova being a cat lady surfaced, someone in the Kremlin or the FSB, decided to spin it, you know what I mean?”

  “Yes I am perfectly aware of ‘spinning’ news.”

  “They spun it from ‘Crazy Cat Lady’ to ‘Big Cat Lady’. You see?”

  “No.”

  “Well they made a huge fuss and put out a news conference saying she believed in preserving Russia’s great cats, particularly the almost extinct, Siberian Tiger.”

  “Siberian Tigers? Ah… like a gay beard… I see… nice,” the Premier seemed to get it.

  “Yes so… now she is no longer a crazy cat lady, but a preserver of Russia, a conserver of wildlife. Plus now, everybody has forgotten her catty past. She also has these cool pictures to prove it.”

  “Interesting. Maybe we should do something similar for me?”

  “You? Really?” Hu Gong looked the Premier from top to toe. There wasn’t much.

  “Yeah, I’m getting tired of the dragon and the panda. One is imaginary and other eats shoots. Not manly enough. Not powerful enough. Find me something almost extinct in China… it has to be manly though.”

  “Well, why don’t you ask your diaper wearing interns to do that?”

  “Yes, good idea. I will tell my assistant… wow… I think this was a seminal move in Russian policy... and when my interns find a worthy Chinese beast, it will be ours too.”

  “Semen? Yeah we could steal some tiger semen… cross it with a Chinese Panda or lemur or something… very direct… I already like it.”

  “NO. STOP. Just no. Where do you… how do you…”

  “Okay. Ok. Carry on… you were saying something about policy.”

  Premier Xiannian shook his head before continuing, “Yeah, by identifying herself with the Siberian Tiger, Petrova is also changing the Russian image, the brand… from the slow brooding bear to an agile cunning tiger. So the next time the Wall Street Journal or Calamity News wants to ‘cry bear’ they gotta, cry tiger. You see?”

  Gong couldn’t care less. This was political bs. He enjoyed the simpler stuff… digging up dirt, creating plans, putting out hits in a brand new country… he still had East Timor and Faroe Islands on his bucket list…, blackmailing politburo members on behalf of other politburo members, that kind of stuff. Not sprucing up images.

  The President finally stopped talking, “… Ok Hu, the more you reveal, the more I like your plan… whatever it is. Please proceed.”

  “Premier, a couple of months ago, to prove her love for tigers, Anna actually released four grown Siberian Tigers into their natural habitat... And that natural habitat happens to lie in Far Eastern Russia… particularly the Primorsky Krai… which is?”

  “Which is what we are looking at right now… the Russia we are seeing is Primorsky Krai.”

  Hu Gong flashed his yellow teeth at his Premier Xiannian. Muhahaha.

  The premier trained his binoculars on the Russian side. “God HU, don’t tell me we are going to grab the tigers.”

  The international border between Russia and China was less than 800 meters from the Fangchun Tower.

  “Sort off yes.”

  “God I would love to have some Tiger Teriyaki right about now. I will send her a picture of me savoring it. That will show her the difference between Chinese and Japanese cooking… Making a deal with the Japanese? What the fuck was she thinking?”

  “Women huh?”

  “Even then. What the fuck was she thinking?”

  “Or like I said before, she probably fell off her cycle.”

  “Stop. Please. Enough with your theories on cycles. Just when I think you aren’t a complete…”

  “… a complete...? Go on.”

  Premier Xiannian sighed. “Nothing. Whats our next move?”

  “Well, over the last week my team has been spying this area. Of the four tigers released, a female codenamed Zoya, has been spotted here. According to my men, she comes to the Trans-Siberian rail line twenty to thirty minutes after the dried fish passes by. Can you guess why?”

  “Eat fish?”

  “Good, you aren’t a complete… ah never mind…”

  “We are even. Carry on.”

  “As you can imagine these old Russian bogies don’t seal well and the fish tend to fall out. So our Zoya… or their Zoya, comes out when the coast is clear and goes for the easy pickings.”

  “But don’t tigers eat gazelles and other living things. I thought they liked to hunt. Not decayed fish.”

  “I don’t know about that. I think Zoya has a good taste, even great. Those dried fish can be sublime.”

  “Ah. Again with the dried fish. Fine, I will try your fish when I get back to Beijing.”

  “Muhahaha. Muhahaha. Muhahaha,” the intelligence head guffawed with evil earnest.

  After a few more minutes, Hu Gong plodded again, “I was kidding. Tigers don’t like dead fish. It’s just that these were urban Moscow tigers. All pampered and soft. They never learnt to hunt.”

  The premier stared sullenly through the binoculars. The tiger talk was beginning to bore him. Hu Gong was pulling storylines from Madagascar now. Didn’t intelligence chiefs get liquidated all the time?

  Suddenly he saw movement across the railway line. A large Siberian tiger peeked out furtively from under a bush.

  “Hu… Look. Is that Zoya?” exclaimed the Premier.

  Even before Hu could lift his binoculars, his ear piece began buzzing with chatter between his field commander and the seven hidden snipers.

  Zoya the Siberian tiger cautiously approached the train tracks. Her tail twirled. Having observed the border for decades, the Chinese were well aware of Russian sentries and posts in the vicinity - There were none. Zero.

  There was of course the Khasan Railway Terminal about a mile north, the last point on the Trans-Siberian. But Hu and his men weren’t worried. This was the boondocks of the Russian Federation. For that matter, the tri-border area was also the boondocks of the People’s Republic of China, the only country with an apostrophe in its name.

  Zoya knelt down and smelt the mackerel strewn alongside the tracks. Premier Xiannian was quite sure the majestic beast wiggled her nose. She didn’t seem to like it. The tiger then walked along the track and checked out a few more of the fallen mackerel, before making up her mind.

  After making sure that no one was watching, Zoya gobbled a couple of fish. Midway through her eighteenth chew, her jaws froze. She seemed to look straight up at the Fangchun Observation Tower. Straight up into the Premier Xiannian’s eyes.

  Zoya the tiger stormed the international border.

  “Oh shit the tiger is coming towards us,” yelled the alarmed Chinese Premier.

  “Quick. Take it down. Don’t let it cross the border,” Hu Gong screamed into his headpiece.

  The magnificent beast was already across the border.

  “Sniper 6, WTF?” Hu heard the commander scream in his ear piece.

  “Locked and loaded,” replied Sniper 6.

  Caught off guard, Sniper 6 finally took aim. Just as he fondled his trigger, the beast belly flopped and stopped moving.

  “Oh shit… is it dead?” cried the Premier.

  Hu relayed, “What just happened? Is the tiger dead?”

  “No sir. No one took a shot. The tiger… it just collapsed…” the team leader took a closer look at the tiger before announcing, “Also… it might have barfed…”

  “Ah ha… That smelly fish! She just couldn’t take it,” offered the Premier triumphantly.

  “Sir what do we do?” asked the Team Leader to Hu Gong.

  This was bad on many levels. A clean sniper hit, would have sent the Russian government after the poachers. But this was bad. First of all the tiger was inside Chinese territory and Hu was quite sure there was some tracking chip on the tiger. To anyone analyzing the tracking data in Moscow, the way the tiger had charged the international border would imply that it had been provoked from the Chinese side. Without bullet wounds, they could assume the t
iger had been poisoned. Ughh.

  “Huuu what do we doooo?” the Premier was freaking out.

  Hu’s rice bred brain furiously churned through the permutations. They could abandon and run but that was leaving things up in the air. Shit could fall anywhere. He didn’t like it. Perhaps the tiger was faking it.

  Hu fired his salvo, “Team Leader, send one of the snipers to go check its pulse. It could be faking it. The striped bastards are known for their shenanigans.”

  “Ughh, ok. Sniper 3 approach tiger slowly and prod him with your gun.”

  “No gun you moron. I don’t want tiger blood on my land. Sniper 3, I order you to leave your gun behind.”

  “Sir we came here to kill the tiger,” protested the Team Leader.

  “Not anymore. Not inside our border.”

  “Sir we can shoot it now and then drag it over the border. Problem solved,” offered Sniper 6.

  “Are you a fucking idiot? It’s going to need four or five of you guys to lift that thing. Then we need to worry about foot prints, drag marks, the next train and maybe even a passing Russian satellite… Or worse an American satellite.”

  “Yes sir. Sniper 3, abandon gun… wait, in fact leave all your weapons behind. Knives, nunchucks everything.”

  Sniper 3 wasn’t comfortable with the turn of events. “Team Leader, am I supposed to go and give it a mouth to mouth..?” he said sarcastically before taking off.

  “Ah. Thinking on your feet... if necessary, yes. But use your water bottle first. Just, just splash the tiger’s face…”

  “Ya good thinking Team Leader. Sniper 3… splash the water gently,” added Hu Gong.

  Hu Gong wasn’t done thinking yet. He quickly went down the stairs and grabbed the Tower keeper, who could have easily passed for a troll and shook him, “Do you have a dog? A guard dog?”

  “No sir. I ate it for lunch a couple of weeks ago. It’s hard to get supplies around here,” replied the stoic Troll.